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« on: January 07, 2016, 03:57:43 am »
I like to do a lot of layering to make a "complete" pad, so what I usually start doing is making a patch that I will sort of base the overall vibe and tone of the pad on. Incidentally, it usually falls within my """style""". Anyway, I open up a synth (usually Sylenth for the base patch) and make two oscillators saw waves and two oscillators tri saw waves; turn off retrigger on one of the oscillators with a saw and one with a tri saw. I detune all of them a fair bit and then lowpass to taste, which is usually about 37Hz - 136Hz. Then, I put a chorus and a flanger on the patch and put the volume of both to about 25%, stereo widen a little, add reverb and usually adjust the volume of the reverb between 10% - 35% (depending on the track). Sometimes I will also use the built-in chorus in Sylenth and put the wetness at 10%, give it a lot of depth and width, and put the chorus rate at .01Hz for a little bit of an added effect. Once I am done with tweaking those things around, I EQ out everything but the mids.
After that, I start working on the pad that will be the "airy" highs. I usually use a triangle wave, bandpass it, EQ out the mids and lows, stereo widen, and add lots of reverb. Nothing super special; the only thing I really do much with this pad is modulate the wetness of the reverb, pan a little, maybe add a phaser and then slowly modulate the wetness of the phaser while keeping the volume around 10% - 15%.
Lastly, I make the bass. The bass is usually really simple and I don't really try to do anything fancy because I like the bass to stay in the center and hold everything together, so it's usually a detuned saw with a lowpass filter that has really high resonance (I don't know how many Hz the cutoff on the lowpass is because 3xosc doesn't show it when I adjust, but it's pretty low), EQ out highs and mids and then it's done.
I don't make all my pads this way, but this is usually how it starts out before I completely switch patches or effects out to make the sound I want for a track.